I am among those who love the banter. In fact, it's probably the banter I tune in for more than the interviews. Spiffy jumpers, by the way. With them, this particular intro banter would have truly excelled had you downed a few drinks in advance. Next time, perhaps.
Happy Christmas from up above (Scotland)! You're probably the only ones who say Happy rather than Merry. If I remember correctly it only started last year.
I think the difficulty with playing a roleplaying game in the romance genre, is that typically there's four or five players, and a GM. To follow a romance plot, you have to introduce those characters to NPCs the GM plays that they can then romance. Or, two or more of the players have to romance each other's characters. That's really not easy to do. It's much easier to play the spies in Berlin setting. One of you is an ex soldier, one was a lawyer, one is a fresh MI6 spy straight out of university, one of you was a veteran police detective. Your boss asks you to cross the wall, and help someone defect. Also, Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium is one of the best settings and games available. Highly recommended. It's less about heroism, and more about either dying or going horribly insane because the unnameable horrors you witness destroy your sanity. Plus it's a 1920's setting so you can play all sorts of fun archetypes from noir detectives to ex-soldiers, to archaeologists or occult researchers. More or less whatever you want. Doesn't matter too much because you're mincemeat the first time you meet a pack of ghouls anyway :D Glad to see Paddy is doing so well :)
For romance, perhaps the Cthulhu Regecy book, or Blood-stained Love for Vampire: the Masquerade? Probably not cozy romance, though. For Sci-fi, perhaps the Alien or Blade Runner games from Free League is worth checking out? For your 1968s spy dropped behind the Iron Curtain game, I would build it myself ("homebrew" is the term), using Basic Roleplaying Game or Modern Age for rules. For a great setting and adventure in a single book I'd bet James would love, check out Berlin: the Wicked City for Call of Cthulhu (ok, that makes it two books). Great show!
